How Jay Carney, Time's Washington bureau chief, "works":

First: Have a junior staffer take a 746 word Bloomberg report (issued on May 4) about Gonzales, Sampson, and Goodling and trim it down to 549 words.

Second: Write a post over at Swampland with these words:

Our colleague Massimo Calabresi breaks new ground on this story ...

Third: Rest easy, now that you've finally said something on the U.S. Attorney dismissals since last commenting on March 20 (about Fred Fielding's negotiations with the Senate Judiciary committee over White House staff testimony).

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For those interested, here is the entire set of Swampland posts by Carney on the Attorney Scandal:

• January 11: The famous post where Carney dismissed Josh Marshall's work on the attorney firings with these words:

  Of course! It all makes perfect conspiratorial sense!
  
  Except for one thing: in this case some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist.

• January 18: Jay pulls back a bit, but still maintains:

  ... what I don't see is a broad-based conspiracy. I see political hackery ...

  Whatever that distinction is supposed to mean.
  
  
• March 2: Carney pulls back further, but with caveats: (emp add)

  The story changed this week when one of the fired US Attorneys, David Iglesias, went public with accusations that he had been pressured by two lawmakers to speed up the investigation of a New Mexico Democrat. Those accusations have spurred the Dems on the Hill into action. The hearing Tuesday should be riveting. If Iglesias names names, and others tell similar stories, I will take my hat off to Marshall and others in the blogosphere and congratulate them for having been right in their suspicions about this story from the beginning. We're not there yet, but Iglesias' decision to go public is a big deal.

• March 6: Small entry where he says:

  ... the fired U.S. Attorneys have made the administration look ... dismissive of the idea that federal prosecutors should be given broad independence from political interference.

• March 13: The hat is off!

  My hat is off. Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo and everyone else out there whose instincts told them there was something deeply wrong and even sinister about the firings, and who dug around and kept writing about them while Iglesias decided whether to talk to the press or go quietly on to his next job, deserve tremendous credit.
  
  When this story first surfaced, I thought the Bush White House and Justice Department were guilty of poorly executed acts of crass political patronage. I called some Democrats on the Hill; they were "concerned", but this was not a priority.

  If Jay calls "some Democrats" and they aren't on top of things, then it's a good reason for no further investigation. That's the Time magazine way.
  
  
• March 20: About Fred Fielding and the Senate Judiciary committee.
  
  
• May 8: The post where Carney says Time magazine "breaks new ground" on the U.S.Attorney firings.

There you have it. No comments in February. None in April from Time magazine's Washington bureau chief, even though his hat is off and he acknowledges there is something substantial and serious going on.


posted by Quiddity at 5/08/2007 06:48:00 PM